The title of this article isn’t that creative on purpose; it helps drive home the point I wanted to make. That everything we think, know, talk about… it’s no more than a rehash of everything we already know. Here’s a little example I whipped up (but really didn’t, because it’s nothing new, it’s just something that already exists); If  I were to ask you to think of a completely new colour, and then describe it to me, you could only ever tell me that it’s kind of brown, but more rhubarb, and it sounds like cheese falling on a tin roof and it’s kind of that, but it’s also mixed with cornflakes. You could even try to tell me that it’s ‘quijamastatlakka’, but you would have only chose those words or sounds because they are a subset of everything you already know.

So, she asks… what was there before the whole universe existed… what was in that big empty nothing? Well.. the answer isn’t in a science book hidden at the back of the library, or hidden within the ancient teachings of some religion that was made up because they were shit-scared of not having any answers. It’s a trick, it’s not the answer which we need to figure out, it’s the question. It’s why we try to explain things in the same way that we experience life. It’s why we’re so focussed on asking why.

There are things in this universe that we don’t know, like colours that we’ve never seen, or  some concept that I can’t explain to you, because I don’t know what it is. I believe that whatever there is/was/to before the universe is out of our understanding simply because we ask this question in terms of things we know; before, during, after, exist, not-exist.

I’m not saying that we’ll never understand, but I feel like we’re not doing ourselves any favours by asking these questions. Instead, I suggest we just observe more; increase the number of tools we have to relate to things. Once we know Everything (seeing = knowing??), we’ll be able to explain Everything. Until then we’re still going to be wastefully treading water, when we could be just sitting on the edge of the rapidly expanding universe watching the beautiful stars unfold a billion years in the past before our very eyes.

Even though there is a 100% chance that I am wrong, I won’t tell my niece any of this, even though there is also a 100% chance that I am right. Perhaps she’ll figure out something completely new and different and won’t need those decaying jetpack blueprints after all. We can only hope.

Something that I’ve been fascinated with ever since being involved in the creation of one of the first social networking websites, was how the medium of the internet could enrich people’s lives. The idea of the internet used to be alien, and many people that I spoke to had this idea that the fairly anonymous person on the other end of your computer terminal was either a spotty faced social-retard or a lecherous old dude pretending to be a chick. I knew this wasn’t always the case, as none of my friends who used the internet fit these stereotypes.The motivation for creating this networking site was to allow people to communicate, with the intention of meeting up ‘out there’ in the physical world. Increase the number of people you come into contact with, and you up the chance of developing rich relationships. That was the idea at least and for a while, it seemed to work; people would report back telling us that they met their new spouse on our site, but the site eventually evolved into something that was more akin to a porn site, dating websites became popular, more serious social networking sites emerged and the ‘party’ site we had built over was left drifting somewhere in the middle, staying afloat on it’s last planks of identity.

It had been 2 years, 7 months and 14 days since I first signed my privacy to Facebook’s data-hungry servers. Then yesterday I decided to vacate the site altogether. Although I had acquired hundreds of new contacts, and at the few clicks of a mouse I could stalk any one of them…  I felt that it was diluting the quality of my relationship with people in general. The information that people choose to present to you in real life, is a fraction of what they are capable of showing you. Through all the different aspects of their personality, they limit it down to the kind of person they want you to see them as. But online, through a social networking site, this quality of communication is a minute slither of that fraction. You don’t get to study body language, there’s no chance to touch, no smells, no awkward silences, no brief glimpse of eyes darting to the side that hopefully went unnoticed when you were telling a lie. And all the time, I kept telling myself that by using this site I was strengthening the bonds of my relationships with people.

By writing this blog post online, I’m a hypocrite. Perhaps I should broadcast this conversation as a movie in smell-o-vision instead of just creating and then re-editing my words into a muted text version of my own thoughts. Or maybe we should meet up sometime soon and have a lengthy conversation about it in some overcrowded English pub with a log fire crackling in the next room, pieces of burnt ash drifting their way into the fibres of our clothes.

I feel that the term Social Networking should be renamed to Social Entertainment, and that some day during the evolution of the internet, it may give birth to a tool which enriches the quality of our relationships with other humans. In the meantime, if you’re interested in trading up the hours that you invest in Facebook for a bit more free time to phone a loved one or start a fight with your neighbour, then this might be of interest to you.

Why do we use Facebook, in particular? I asked a couple of people why they used it, and got some interesting responses. Some people get dates, some get business contacts, some get a sense of connection with friends that live too far away and some people simply get entertainment from it. I liked the way one of my friends said that it was like sending a bulk email, but without the guilt of feeling like a spammer (has Facebook managed to simply re-brand the bulk email into something less annoying?). The common thing here, is that we all ‘get’ something. So because we are continuously being provided with ‘rewards’, we continue to use it. There are a limited number of things that we can do on the site, which makes it easier for the other junkies to respond with an encouraging message or a ‘I like this’. Where are the ‘dislike’ links, may I ask? And why is it that we can only ‘like’ something? If we can only respond in this manner with either a neutral (not clicking the like link) or a positive (clicking the link), then where did the negative go? Is the neutral now taking on the role of the negative, and if so, does that mean that the hundred or so people that don’t click that they like the link, actually mean that they don’t like it?

I was going to suggest that Facebook mirrors how we interact with people in our lives outside of our browser portals, but in a fast paced way, driven by the speed of communication that the advent of the internet provides us. It could be regarded as a tool to fish for rewards, except this is the trawler that sucks up a whole load of shrimp in one go. If this was truly a reflection of our normal daily lives; just another step in the progress of man rather than a shift in direction, then why are we encouraged to make only positive comments? I know the option is still there to make negative ones, it’s just not as easy to do so. I imagine that if there was a dislike link, then the number of possible reward catches per day would be reduced by the number of negative dolphins that you caught in your net whilst scraping the bottom of the ocean. I would imagine then, that people would use Facebook less, and that doesn’t seem to be something that this Business would want to happen. So, it’s a controlled system… not exactly a surprise…

Do I want to be getting reward from a system that reflects an over simplified version of communication? I like life, I like it’s complexities. I’m not saying that Facebook is a bad boy and should be sent to his room without any supper, I’m just saying that if you’re going to play together, then just remember that he is slightly retarded and despite it being fun to beat him at Junior Scrabble, don’t neglect your other more intelligent friends, who although won’t be so easy to beat at word games, could provide a much greater reward over a longer period of time (and will actually tell you if they don’t like something).